Centrica awarded for carer support

Centrica and Unilever were among the winners of Business in the Community’s 2015 Responsible Business Gala Awards.

Unilever picked up the Bupa Employee Wellbeing Award in recognition of its approach to mental health and the support it provides to its staff. The organisation has established a comprehensive mental wellbeing programme, which provides training for all line managers and access to bespoke resources. Senior managers also share their personal experiences with mental health issues.

The implementation of its mental wellbeing programme has helped Unilever to increase productivity and reduce absence rates.

Centrica was named winner of the Championing an Ageing Workforce Award. The energy firm estimates that 60% of its 36,000 employees will be carers at some point in their working lives.

Centrica offers employees support to enable them to combine caring responsibilities with their working lives. This includes the option to take up to a month’s paid leave, altered working hours and a 1,000-strong carers’ support network. Other initiatives include mentoring and line manager training.

The support systems put in place by Centrica have enabled it to save £4.5 million in absenteeism and retention costs.

Other winners included AllLife, Barclays, Fujitsu, and Land Securities Group.

Stephen Howard, chief executive of Business in the Community, said: “From the largest global multinational to the smallest local firm, these inspirational winners prove that every business can, and should, play its part to build a fairer society for us all.

“I congratulate them all, for the practical action they have taken to address some of the world’s most pressing issues, and for proving that making a difference and being a successful business are not mutually exclusive.”

‘The support systems put in place by Centrica for working carers have enabled it to save £4.5 million in absenteeism and retention costs.’ Thanks Centrica for creating much-needed evidence that supporting working carers is not only a nice thing to do (which everyone understands) – it is also about a strong business case and significant ROI.
If we take Centrica’s £4.5m saving from 30k employees, and look at it at a national level (30m employees) – there is £4.5b worth of savings on the table for UK plc.
Our ageing workforce and the increasing longevity of the elderly parents they are increasingly going to be required to provide informal care for – mean that the working carer challenge is only going to become much more significant (keeping in mind already that 1 in 9 UK employees is a working carer – per Carers UK 2013).
The £4.5b in costs – or opportunities for organisations like Centrica taking action – is just the beginning!

Forgive me if I am sceptical, but I recently retired after nearly 41years service at British gas,caring company!! At new year my wife had to go into hospital for minor operation I struggled to get two days off to be there for my wife,eventually after photographic proof I got two days off…